Giboney's subdivision in South Cape

Several months ago, I came across a small box on a shelf -- not such an unusual occurrence, here at the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center, but what was inside, was. I found several title abstracts, or a document detailing a land parcel's ownership chain. Most of these dated back to the beginning of kept records, so, late 1700s, early 1800s, with typewritten transcriptions of wills and deeds, plat maps and other odd bits of information.

What to do with this veritable fortune of information? My first -- naive -- thought was to index them, create a database arranged by property address. I've seen title abstracts before, and each one in my experience pertained to just one piece of property.

I quickly discovered these were not all that way.

After I read the legal descriptions of several of the title abstracts, with their archaic talk of arpens and chains for measurements, figured out from said descriptions what physical address best fit the descriptions, I came across one that stopped this budding project dead in its tracks.

Giboney Houck's subdivision.

Houck is a familiar enough name in Cape Girardeau's history, as is Giboney. Louis Houck, railroad tycoon and historian who built the sprawling Elmwood Manor off Bloomfield Road, had married Mary Giboney, and their son, Giboney Houck, was born in 1878. All I could find on him (on an admittedly cursory search) is that young Giboney joined the military in 1899. You can read more about his service in the Spanish-American War in Garrett Kremer-Wright's column, linked below.

Giboney Houck was also a property developer. He subdivided this parcel of land, Out Lot 50 of Survey 2199, to be exact -- 80 acres, and I would guess that each tract of land is approximately 1/10 of an acre, so that would be around 800 addresses for a single abstract. Some of these tracts are probably larger, if they belong to a business or church, but the residential lots are likely around that size, leading to hundreds of addresses, meaning a catalog indexed by address would be impractical.

The property boundaries begin at the 900 block of South Sprigg Street where it meets Elm, and "a point opposite the residence of William Beadeau [sic]," which, according to his file with the probate court (CP-0154), was bounded on two sides by Good Hope and Frederick streets. I am not certain, but at a guess, I would think Beaudean Lane in that neighborhood is likely related to William or his family.

The original owner listed was Louis Lorimier, Cape Girardeau's founder. Next was Valentine Miller, then Andrew Giboney, and Mary Giboney, later Mary Giboney Houck.

A Geographic Information Systems or GIS map of the city of Cape Girardeau -- cityofcapegirardeau.org/departments/development/geographic_information_systems___g_i_s_mapping_ -- shows several city blocks contained in this section of property in present-day South Cape. Eventually I would love to put together a GIS map of the properties in these abstracts so patrons can click on a property and see if we have a title abstract that describes its history, but until then, I'll keep working on cataloging what we have and putting a note on each abstract listing some addresses or at least the general area covered.

Column: Garret B. Kremer-Wright: Giboney Houck's Spanish-American War service (3/6/21) | Southeast Missourian newspaper, Cape Girardeau, MO -- semissourian.com/story/2869656.html.